The present state of the art in lighting pools, fountains and theatrical stages consists of fixed intensity lighting and in select cases the capability to switch from fully on to fully off. The invention, known commercially as SPECTROMATIC, advances the state of the art in lighting by providing for changing the intensity of the light sinusoidally and simultaneously mixing several color frequencies to generate new colors continuously. The speed of continuous light rotation can be changed from one cycle per several minutes to as fast as one cycle per one second or less. This complete cycle of color rotation will generate most of the frequencies in the visible spectrum to which the eye is sensitive. The system provides a switch control to stop the rotation of these colors during any time of the cycle rotation. The third feature of SPECTROMATIC is to maintain the three colors at any level in intensity from minimum power to maximum, depending on the programming of the computer. The fourth feature provides the capability to program the light intensity to be sensitive to music. In this mode, SPECTROMATIC is programmed to start from zero light intensity, when the music is off, and increase in intensity sinusoidally depending on the loudness of the music. Mono sound can drive the lighting of a three color loop. When using six or more lamps in one rotation loop, each set of colors can be driven by one channel of stereo music.
The invention has been built and tested. The first breadboard system consisted of TTL devices and passive circuit elements such as resistors, capacitors and diodes. This integrated circuit was mounted on vector board 4".times.6" and the pins were wirewrapped. Two of these systems were originally built which enabled rotating three and six lamps in one loop. Many tests were conducted on this computer and on the actual lights immersed in a pool to show their feasibility and to improve the operation of the system.
The second version was changed utilizing printed board triacs to drive the lamps and pulse transformers to trigger the triacs. Many tests were performed on this brassboard system both in the laboratory and in the field where actual lamps were driven by the computer while they were immersed in water. One of the systems was installed in a pool and has been operating continuously and successfully since May 1978. It has proved very reliable and successfully exhibits all the capabilities as discussed herein. The present production version uses a double sided copper clad printed board with optical couplers to drive the triacs. Several sample production systems were built, tested and proven very successful.